


electricity in the merest contact

by alamorn



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi-Centric, Families of Choice, Gen, On the Way to Scarif, Touch-Starved, k2 is in there but not enough to tag for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 09:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9716438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: The Empire takes and takes and does not give, and it especially does not give things like gentle touch or simple human connection.





	

When he starts to drift away from his body, Cassian cups the back of his head. Cassian’s hand is like the rest of him — long, thin, strong, radiating heat — and something in Bodhi’s mind goes quiet. The pressure on his neck is light enough that if he twitched he could displace it so he holds very very still.

His breath shudders in and out as Cassian stares at him. Bodhi wants to close his eyes so that he cannot see himself being seen, but he can not bear to lose even a second of this contact that is not contact. The meeting of eyes makes his skin rise into gooseflesh, makes him aware of points of actual contact — finger tips in a line on his spine, pad of thumb brushing the hinge of his jaw, the dry heat of the palm like a brand or a shackle, pulling him into his body.

Cassian waits for him to nod, and swallow, and move away.

After, Bodhi can feel the heat of his hand for hours.

 

K2-SO does not touch him. It is a relief.

 

Jyn is as bad at having a body as Bodhi is. He almost asks her, _who tortured you? why do you look at hands the way I look at hands?_ He almost asks her, _do you hear your heart in your ears? does it drown out the words around you?_ But there is no time to commiserate. No one is happy, in a rebellion. No one has a happy beginning.

He knows her father, and that is answer enough. He was in the hands of the man who raised her, and that is more than an answer. Bodhi knows a hand is just as often a fist. He knows that doesn’t stop the longing for touch.

They do not touch, they barely talk, but they meet each other’s eyes. It is not enough. It is more than the Empire offered.

 

Chirrut brings Bodhi food as Bodhi stares out at the stars, avoiding the noise and closeness of the group below. There is static in his ears and his fingers are tingling. Bodhi doesn’t notice Chirrut until he sits in the navigator’s seat and sighs heavily.

“Baze has no poetry in his soul. Tell me about the stars, Bodhi Rook,” Chirrut says, tossing a protein bar at him.

Bodhi doesn’t catch it, so it bounces off his chest and into his lap, but his hands aren’t shaking when he picks it up and rips the foil. “I’m not sure I have poetry in _my_ soul,” he says apologetically.

Chirrut grins at him. “You have love, and that is much the same.”

Bodhi takes a bite he can’t taste and thinks while he chews. “The stars are…they’re hope, I suppose. When I first started flying, I was…I was unquestioning. Not…loyal, because I was not committed, but I knew that the Empire fed me and protected me. The Empire was _everything_. To question it would have been to question gravity. And then I started flying, and I could see how big the universe is. And I started to question. How could they control everything, like they say? There is too much there for any one organization to control, let alone one with as bad an organizational system as the Empire. So. Each star is a question, to me. Are they lying? What are they lying about? What else is out there?” He subsides with an embarrassed cough and takes a large bite of the protein bar.

But Chirrut isn’t laughing. He’s smiling, a little, but it’s fond, not mocking. “See?” he says. “Poetry.”

They sit in silence for a moment. The conversation below floats up through the manhole, but it is a sea of words, no one distinguishable from another.

“May I see you?” Chirrut asks, waving a hand to clarify. “I would like to put a face to such lovely thoughts.”

Bodhi blushes and nods, then remembers Chirrut is blind and says, “Yes.”

Chirrut gets up and walks over to Bodhi, his steps smaller than when he carries his staff but no less confident. He holds his hands just in front of him until Bodhi understands and takes them and puts them on his face.

Chirrut’s hands are cool and hard calloused, but he is gentle as he sweeps his thumbs over Bodhi’s eyes. Once he has finished his exploring — index finger down the bridge of Bodhi’s nose, thumbs tracing Bodhi’s jaw — he holds Bodhi’s face firmly by the cheeks and presses an even firmer kiss against Bodhi’s forehead.

Bodhi blushes hot enough that Chirrut cackles and releases him. “You’re a good man, Bodhi Rook, and I am glad to know you, one Jedha boy to another. Don’t tell Baze, he’ll be jealous.”

Bodhi is still too embarrassed to talk, so Chirrut pats his cheek and leaves, still laughing.

Bodhi presses his fingers to where Chirrut pressed his lips. He does not want to assign meaning to it, but he feels…Not lighter, but seen, perhaps. He is not sure of much, but he thinks that he’s made the right decision for once.

 

Baze touches him constantly. Small touches, a flat hand on Bodhi’s arm or back, a clap to the shoulder, standing close so that they knock together at the elbow, sitting across from Bodhi and letting his legs spill into Bodhi’s space so their ankles press together.

His throat still remembers the feeling of Baze’s hand around it, when they were both locked in Saw Gerrera’s hideout and Bodhi was ready to die. These small touches are not quite an apology, but they overlay the hard grasp of Baze’s hand.

There’s no time to dwell. Bodhi does not hold it against him, but he does appreciate the gesture.

 

When they land on Scarif, there is no time for touching, but Bodhi looks at each of them for as long as he can bear. The ones whose names he didn’t have time to learn, just as much as Cassian, as K2, as Jyn, and Chirrut, and Baze. He catches others doing the same thing.

They will die, and if they fail they will be forgotten. But Bodhi never expected to be remembered. It is not so great a sacrifice, when he thinks of it like that. Here and now, he locks eyes with everyone he can, and touches Chirrut’s shoulder. They will die, but not alone. They will die, but if they don’t how many more will? They will die, but Bodhi has been touched more in the past few hours than in the past few years, and he finally feels human again.


End file.
